To Boldly Go…

As you’ve probably gathered by the title of this post, I’ve been seriously bitten by the Star Trek bug recently, due to Simon’s stated intention that September would be “Star Trek” Month on his blog Fantorical.

So whilst he’s been painting the minions of Nurgle and I should have been painting Samurai and Ashigaru, I’ve been building starships instead…

In my last post, I introduced the first three vessels of the New Albion Royal Navy – the HMS Scott, a Dragon Class Dreadnought; the HMS Moore, a Lion Class Cruiser and the HMS Webb, a Bulldog Class Frigate, as shown below  – left to right.

As I’d decided to write my own set of rules (currently known as Final Frontier), I decided to keep things simple by only having four initial starship sizes, the three mentioned above and the smallest vessel – the Corvette. So I obviously needed a Corvette in the same style as those above. so off I went to the Carrion Crow Shipyards and built one. And here it is;

This is the HMS Nash, a Unicorn Class Corvette, cunningly constructed from a GW plastic shield, two GW lasguns and a small length of cotton bud stem. And to give you all some idea of how it compares size-wise with the other vessels, here it is with the HMS Moore.

As you can see, I’ve also decided to paint the standard transparent flying stands black, with black ink over the top, as I felt this was a more appropriate colour.

Now, in a response to one of the comments made on my previous post, I stated that I would be constructing a space station as well, the DSS Awdry. I’d saved a ‘spinner’ from the Doctor Who collectible miniatures game (which was rubbish – although the figures weren’t bad…), which was in the shape of David Tennant’s Tardis console. Upside down, I thought this would make a pretty good space station, once mounted and repainted. I’d put it to one side for this purpose – but when I went to make a start on it, I couldn’t find the bloody thing! Very annoying. So I had to have a bit of a rethink…

Now, as regular visitors will know, I tend to debase Heroclix miniatures, mount them on 2 pence pieces and repaint them as other characters. Which means I have rather a lot of Heroclix bases knocking about, as being a packrat, I never throw anything away that could be useful. Someone recently asked what to do with these ‘spare’ bases and whilst the first thing that springs to mind is using them as proxy poker chips, that’s not very ‘hobby’.

Now, if you take two of the ‘Oreo’ style bases, take them apart and glue two of the bottoms bottom-to-bottom, you get a chunky ‘wheel’ with knurled edge. Drilling a hole into the centre of one of the flat sides and mounting it on a flight stand, you now have a sort of flying saucer. A suitable paint job (which took bloody ages, as I kept changing my mind – so it’s been white, grey, blue-grey and silver, before I decided on what I wanted) and you end up with something like this:

This is the DSS Awdry, with the HMS Nash and HMS Webb nearby, to give an idea of scale. It was given an undercoat of GW Chainmail, followed by a GW Brown Ink wash except for the centre of the topand the knurled edge, which received a GW Blue Ink wash instead. It kind of reminds me of a cross between Deep Space 9 and the BT tower…

So, we have four starships from the New Albion Royal Navy and a space station. But we can’t actually have a space battle unless we have some suitable foes. So, heading back to my box of GI Joe accessories, I selected a couple of suitable backpacks, snipped off the pegs and drilled holes in them so they could be mounted on flight stands. Then I painted them in suitable colours and I now have three ‘enemy’ ships as well.

The first is a Dendrassi Raider, equivalent in size to a Frigate. Dendrassi are pirates, but refrain from killing their victims, merely stripping them of their valuables.

Next we have a Rhodian Dartship, also equivalent to a Frigate. The Rhodians are a militaristic and war-like race, who truly believe that the other inhabitants of the universe would fare better under their ever-expanding Empire.

Finally, we have a Karrian Marauder, equivalent to a Dreadnought. The Karrian are the scourge of the universe, their factory ships devouring all in their path and churning out more Karrian ships and troops.

And here’s a shot showing the three ‘enemy’ vessels alongside the NARN Frigate.

Of course I now need a few more ships for each of the ‘enemy’ races, otherwise the New Albion Royal Navy will always outnumber their opponents. The problem is, I need to follow the ‘look’ I’ve already established for each race, which could prove to be a challenge…

However, next week should see a batrep, as I run the first play-test of my Final Frontier rules, where a distress signal is received from the DSS Awdry and the HMS Nash and HMS Webb are sent to investigate…